Explanations : The Third Variation
by kate221b
Summary: Set immediately following the revelations of Sherlock's drug use on the plane in TAB, this is an exploration of what may or may not have happened when John and Sherlock return to 221b. This started life as one of a series of 'five plus one' stories, and was the one which received the most votes to continue.
1. Chapter 1

'Don't tell me - you're not angry with me, you're disappointed in me?'

'Nope. I'm absolutely fucking furious with you.' John shook his head at Sherlock's expression, moved away and slammed his fist into the wall of the living room in 221b, leaving a slight dent in the plaster under the wallpaper, that would have Mrs Hudson wringing her hands in horror. But it was better than his preferred option of making an even bigger dent in the soft tissues of Sherlock's face.

'John-'

'What?' John yelled, not caring that Mrs Hudson was downstairs and could probably hear every word. 'What can you possibly say to make this better, Sherlock? You lied to me. You've been using drugs. A whole bloody cornucopia of the stuff. Enough drugs to make the average junkie roll over with his legs in the air. What the fuck were you thinking?'

'You know what? I don't even want to hear your explanations. But you know what pisses me off the most? You lied to me. Over and over again you lied to me. And I thought -' his voice caught and he sat down with a thump in the armchair - his armchair. 'I just thought that you respected me more than that.'

'It was necessary.'

Sherlock's voice sounded vague as he moved to the window, lifted the curtain and stared out into Baker Street, eyes narrowed as if trying to calculate a tricky equation.

'Necessary? What could require you nearly killing yourself? Just tell me that.'

'I needed answers and I needed them quickly. My Mind Palace was the only way to do that.'

'And your Mind Palace requires drugs to access it? Is that what you're telling me?'

Sherlock turned back to him. 'I've disappointed you, John,' he said, without any trace of emotion in his voice.

'Disappointed me? I'm not your father, Sherlock. I'm not even your brother.'

'No, you're not.'

'So what - I have no right to ask you to hold yourself to a higher moral standard than you appear to want to do?'

'What did you say?'

'I said, that it's probably unreasonable for me to expect you to act like a sensible member of the human race.'

'No, you didn't.' Sherlock frowned slightly, staring at John. 'You said that you expected me to hold myself to a higher moral standard. That's what you said in my mind palace too.'

'So I was in your mind palace? Am I supposed to be flattered by that?'

'Oh, it wasn't just you. Mycroft was there too - and Lestrade. Mary, Molly Hooper, even Anderson put in a brief appearance.'

'And what? We were all involved in your lovely little trip to work out a hundred year old, unsolved case.'

'An important case, John.'

John shook his head in disbelief. 'I don't get you. I really don't. Look I'm trying to be understanding here, but don't you have the tiniest bit of insight into the fact that taking drugs in order to solve a case is the most deluded, self-destructive IDIOCY that I have ever – EVER- come across. You stupid, stupid - bastard.' John realised that he was shouting and forced himself to stop and take a deep breath, struggling to get his anger under control.

'Why does it bother you so much?' Sherlock asked.

'What?' John stared at him, trying to work out if he was being sarcastic,

'Why should it bother you that I took drugs to access my Mind Palace? Why did it bother you when you thought that I was taking them before, when you found me in that squat? Why does it matter how I do what I do? Moriarty could have been back. I had to -'

'You had to what? Kill yourself? Because you can't admit that you don't have all the answers?' John was standing up now, fighting very hard the urge to walk over and punch Sherlock in his smug face.

'Five minutes previously, I thought that I was going to go off and allow myself to be killed in Eastern Europe. My chances of survival in the Mind Palace were significantly higher.'

'What on earth are you talking about?''

'It was a one-way mission. That was the point. Didn't Mycroft tell you?'

'He implied that it was dangerous, but the words 'one-way mission' certainly weren't used. I would have noticed.'

'It was a suicide mission, John.'

'But you would have still have had a chance.'

'And I had a chance with the drugs. The possibility of a fatal overdose was low, and besides which I knew I would be back on the ground within ten minutes. The need for medical attention would have been inconvenient, admittedly, but it was worth the risk.'

'Christ, have you listened to yourself?' John interrupted him. 'Sherlock you have a drug problem. Why can't you see that? It's not normal to use drugs to help you work. It's not normal for your brother to find you unconscious in a drug den or an alley or God knows where on multiple occasions. It's not normal - '

'And is that what I should want to be? Normal?'

John recognised the defensive look on Sherlock's face and decided that it was time to change tack. 'Sherlock, come on, this is the addict in you talking. You're out of control and you know it. Look I know a good drug and alcohol counsellor. I could get you an appointment tomorrow - maybe even this afternoon. Won't you at least go and talk to her.'

'No time, John,' came the reply as Sherlock marched over to his laptop and flicked it open. 'We've got work to do.'

'Work to do?' John repeated.

'Work, yes, Moriarty is back, remember? Or rather he is not back but somebody is creating the illusion that he is back; using his image, his memory to create chaos. And the question is - why?' Sherlock's eyes gleamed with the excitement of a new case, a new challenge.

'And will you be using drugs to help you get these answers?'

'If I have to, yes.' There was the light of challenge in Sherlock's face and John had learnt better than to try to argue with him in this mood.

'Then count me out.'

'What?'

'You heard me, Sherlock. Count me out. Because if you think that I'm willing to just sit here and watch you justify snorting, or whatever you do with those drugs, yourself into illumination then you're wrong. I won't do that.' John stood up and grabbing his coat from the back of the door, shrugged it on.

'You're asking me to make a choice.'

'Give the man a prize. Yes, Sherlock, I'm asking you to choose. Me, or the drugs. You're going to have to decide which one of us you need to work more. Because I won't stand by and watch you destroy yourself with this. I can't. Don't you understand? After all that you've put me through in the last few years, do you honestly think that I'm going to stand by and watch you do this?

'When you're ready to admit that you've got a problem, then give me a call. Until then, you're on your own.'

...

John walked down Baker Street shoulders hunched, muttering to himself, but instead of heading for the tube and home, he headed instead for Regent's Park. He needed some time to cool off before he faced the jostling mass of people on the tube. In the mood that he was in at the moment, he might just thump anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Bloody Sherlock, why couldn't he admit that he had a problem? Why couldn't he see what he was doing to himself?

He turned left inside the gates of the park, skirting round the outside of the boating lake rather than facing the more popular walk towards the rose gardens and the outdoor theatre. By the time that he had reached the far end and crossed over the bridge, he had calmed down a little, and stopped at the kiosk to buy a coffee. As he poured in the white granulated sugar from the sachets and gave it a stir with the wooden stick provided, he found himself wondering if this could have been how Sherlock had been getting the drugs into his system. Cocaine in his coffee? Amphetamines in his tea? Surely not, but then how? How had he been taking them when John had been staying at 221b with him for much of the time since his discharge from hospital without him noticing? ' _You see, but do not observe, John_.' Had it been right in front of his eyes the entire time?

The realisation of his own failure threatened to reverse all of the benefits of his walk and the physical distance that he had been trying to create between himself and an impossible situation. Forcing himself to acknowledge that anger was going to get him nowhere, he turned instead to the techniques learnt in his months of counselling after his return from Afghanistan. Trying to take a step back, and work out why he was so angry.

'Y _ou can't always change a situation, but you can often change how you feel about a situation, and that, in turn, will change how you react to it,_ ' came Ella's voice.

He was angry with Sherlock because he had been using drugs. Because John himself could not understand how somebody so brilliant could feel the need to pour that junk into his body just to prove that he was more clever than anybody else.

And then he understood. It wasn't that Sherlock wanted to be cleverer than everybody else. It was that he needed to be cleverer than everybody else. Because if he wasn't, then what did he have?

And he believed that the drugs were what made him like that. How long he has been using the drugs for, John had no idea. He remembered Sherlock entering his Mind Palace in Baskerville, and he remembered him using the technique before that - to sort data, to recover memories, to solve cases, Had all of that been drug-fuelled?

He remembered Sherlock's words on Bart's roof, and wondered how many of them had been true. _'It was a trick. Just a magic trick. I discovered everything that I could to impress you.'_

Had the trick been drugs all this time? He didn't believe it, not for a second, but if Sherlock believed it, then...

Then he was asking Sherlock to give up the one thing that he cared about. ' _It's all about the work._ ' How many times had John heard him say that? And ' _The mind is what matters. Everything else is transport_.' And if John was asking him to give up drugs, would that in his mind mean giving up the work? And if he was giving up the work, then -'

And then John realised what he had done. And he turned back towards Baker Street, walking as fast as he could and then breaking into a run when even that proved too slow.

' _You can't blackmail an addict into stopping using_ ,' he remembered the peer support worker telling him during his short stint with the Drug and Alcohol Team as a GP Trainee. ' _You can't plead with them to stop in order to prove that they care about you. It doesn't work like that. In their head, all that they have, all that they are is based on their habit. And if you take away that, then they believe that they have nothing. If you withdraw your love and support then they will only turn further to the drugs, and if you take it away entirely, then they may lose hope altogether.'_

' _But if you don't say anything, then aren't you just condoning their actions?_ ' he had argued, thinking of Harry. Thinking about how he could never bear to just sit there and watch her drink herself into oblivion. About how eventually always crack and tip the contents of every bottle of alcohol that he could find down the sink. But there were always more. Somehow, she always got hold of more.

But the peer supporter had just shaken her head at him. _'You're missing the point,' she had said. 'It's all about control. The majority of addicts use to escape themselves because they feel somehow damaged, incomplete. The only person who can make an addict stop using is themselves. Try to take the control of their use away from them and what do they have left? You risk leaving them with only one possible option. And that is why the time when an addict is facing up to their illness is the most dangerous time in terms of overdose.'_

John knew that, he knew all of it, he had just dragged it out of his long-term memory in a feat that even Sherlock would be proud of. So what sort of useless doctor was he to allow his anger to override his concern for Sherlock?

Sherlock hadn't done this to piss John off. He had done it because he was an addict. He hadn't hidden his habit from John to be devious, he had done it because that was what addicts _did_. And he wasn't refusing to accept that he had a problem to be difficult, he was doing it because he had a deep and entrenched addiction and was terrified of facing life without a pharmaceutical cushion.

And John should have known all of that, but instead, he had treated him like a five-year-old and abandoned him. And knowing Sherlock, and how he reacted to being backed into a corner, there was only one possible outcome to that.

It took him a less than fifteen minutes to get back to Baker Street, and when his knocking went unanswered, he lost no time in letting himself in at the street door. He ran up the stairs, and entered the flat without knocking, panting with the exertion of the run.

'Sherlock, I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't get it. I do now. I know it's not that easy, I know you can't just -' and then he stopped talking as he walked round his chair and saw the syringe lying on the floor, and next to it the prostate, barely breathing figure of Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

This started life as a 'five plus one' story and got by far the most votes to be continued.

There are four chapters of this in total - hope it was worth the wait. This is for everyone who read the original 'Explanations' and who voted. If you didn't get your choice, then feel free to PM me - I'm always open to persuasion!


	2. Chapter 2

Dropping to his knees beside Sherlock, John felt an initial jolt of panic, as he always did when facing these situations outside work, but it took less than thirty seconds for his training to kick in.

He shook Sherlock gently by the shoulders, calling his name, and when that failed to provoke a reaction, shouted down the stairs for Mrs Hudson.

Sherlock was lying on his back, his breathing slow and slightly noisy, his airway partially obstructed. John tipped his head back, fingers lifting his chin, to improve it, then dropped his ear to Sherlock's chest to listen to his breathing. Sherlock was breathing at a lazy eight breaths a minute. Too slow. He shouted for Mrs Hudson again, just as she emerged from the door at the top of the stairs, rubbing at her hip.

'Sorry, John, this hip of mine. Can't you write me up for anything stronger?' Then she stopped dead, hand flying to her mouth as she saw Sherlock.

'Call an ambulance, will you?' John said, digging his mobile phone out of his pocket and handing it to her. Give it to me when they put you through to ambulance control.'

'What happened?'

'No time for that now. Just call, will you?' John said, as he checked Sherlocks' pulse at the neck. It was a little slow, but John found that reassuring. If he had speed-balled, combining amphetamines and heroin, then his pulse would have been fast. A slow pulse and a slow respiratory rate together pointed to a pure opiate overdose, far easier to treat. He pulled up Sherlock's eyelids to check. The pupils were tiny, pinpoint, confirming the diagnosis.

'You stupid, stupid bastard,' John murmured, just as Mrs H put the phone to his ear. 'Sorry, I wasn't talking to you,' John said to the call handler. 'This is Dr John Watson, I'm a GP. I need a blue light ambulance to 221b Baker Street. I have an unconscious 37 year old man with a heroin overdose and respiratory depression.'

'Are you with the patient?' asked the call handler, reciting from their screen prompts, John knew. He tried not to get irritated. He knew they had to ask but it was ridiculously frustrating being asked the inane questions when all he wanted was to get Sherlock to hospital ASAP.

'Yes, I'm with the patient. No, he's not conscious, and yes he is breathing but barely,' he told her, pre-empting the triad of questions.

'I'll have a crew with you as quickly as possible, the call handler told him.

John just hoped it was soon enough. Sherlock's breathing was much too shallow for his liking, but without any kit there was little that he could do. And Sherlock's lips were still pink, as were his fingers, with no hint of a blue tinge. He must be oxygenating well enough to not be cyanosed, so saturations above - what - 85%? That would have to do for now.

The ambulance seemed to take forever, but in reality, John suspected that it was well within the eight minutes target time. He had sent Mrs Hudson downstairs as lookout to wave them in the right direction, and also, if he was honest with himself, to stop her flapping over Sherlock. While she was gone, he quietly remove the syringe and tourniquet that had been tossed so casually on the floor, and hid them in a biscuit tin in the kitchen. He doubted that the paramedics would blab to the press but no point in giving them further ammunition if they did.

He handed over to the ambulance crew quickly, as they slid an oxygen mask over Sherlock's face, and a pulse oximeter onto his finger. John was gratified to see his oxygen saturations slowly climbing from the initial 87% as the oxygen did its job. He offered to cannulate Sherlock himself, deliberately picking his right arm, knowing that being right-handed, Sherlock would have been injecting into his left in preference. He had far more chance of finding a useable vein on the right.

He found a vein easily in the back of Sherlock's hand, but his upper arms on both sides were a battle zone. No wonder he had stuck to long-sleeved shirts and tops in John's presence for a while. But his hands would have been too obvious, he had known that John would have noticed injection marks on those.

The cannula slid home with a satisfying flash-back of blood and John injected the first dose of naloxone before securing it with the tape and dressing, then attached a bag of saline. Sherlock's blood pressure was on the low side, not dangerously low, but a little fluid wouldn't hurt. And then they were off, carrying Sherlock down the stairs on the ambulance trolley, John marvelling as he always did at the physical strength of the paramedics. Sherlock was relatively light compared to some of their patients, he knew, but still, carrying a 65kg man down a flight of relatively steep stairs was no mean feat. No wonder they didn't allow pregnant paramedics out on the road. The physical demands of the job were too great.

By the time they got Sherlock into the back of the ambulance, he was groaning slightly, but his pupils when John checked were still tiny. His oxygen saturations were now a steady 96% on oxygen, and John administered another dose of naloxone - intramuscularly this time, into the deltoid muscle in his arm. It was a calculated risk. Intramuscular naloxone worked slower and lasted longer. If he gave Sherlock another intravenous dose then he might well wake up entirely, pull off his oxygen, and refuse to go to hospital. If he did that then he was highly likely to collapse again later on as the naloxone would wear off before the heroin would. By giving him an intramuscular dose, John was ensuring that even if he did do a bunk later, he should stay safe - and breathing, and he was more likely to get Sherlock to hospital and to ensure that he got the help that he needed.

The sirens started up as they sped through the streets towards St Mary's, cars climbing pavements to get out of their way and enabling them to plough a gratifyingly speedy path through the congested London streets. Arriving at A&E, John was relieved to be able to hand over Sherlock's care to the consultant working in the Resus Room that day, and to take a metaphorical back seat. Sherlock was rapidly assessed and then hooked up to the naloxone infusion that he needed. John couldn't help wondering how many times Mycroft had been in exactly this position; watching the medical staff take care of Sherlock, aware of all of the preconceptions that they would have about him and yet equally unable to deny any of them.

Several hours later, Sherlock was moved to a ward, John having pulled in a few favours to get him a side room. In theory, he should be somewhere in direct eye line from the nurses station to allow him to be observed, but John had offered to do the observation himself in return for the privacy the private room afforded.

He sat there, watching Sherlock sleep and wondered where the hell they went from here. That Sherlock had a significant drug problem was obvious; that he was in complete denial about it was unfortunately equally obvious. But surely even Sherlock would be forced to admit that when you ended up in hospital from an overdose, then it had gone beyond 'using' to 'abusing' drugs?

' _Unless he wanted to overdose_ ,' said that uncomfortable little voice in the back of John's head. ' _Unless he was trying to kill himself and you're just assuming that it was accidental.'_

And John Watson, being the sensible, logical human being that he was, tried very hard to push that thought aside. Of course Sherlock hadn't been trying to kill himself, Because why would he? He was back, he was safe, he was shortly going to receive a Royal Pardon if Mycroft had anything to do with it. And he had a case to work on - a massive case, potentially one of the biggest if his career. Why would he want to kill himself? And yet that nagging thought just wouldn't remain silent. And John couldn't help feeling that he was somehow at least partly to blame.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock woke up grumpy - and in all probability withdrawing; a side effect of the naloxone. By blocking the opiate receptors, John knew, it effectively sent addicts used to a constant background level of mu opiate receptor activation into cold turkey. Of course, Sherlock wouldn't admit this was why he felt unwell, and by John's estimation, the withdrawal should be mild. Sherlock had gone through the all-singing, all dancing version of it while he was incarcerated at Her Majesty's Pleasure the previous week, although of course he hadn't admitted that was what it was that time either. John had only found that out from a careful phone call to the medical officer at the high-security unit he'd been incarcerated at. He was unsurprised to discover that Mycroft had arranged for him to have access to all of Sherlock's medical records. He really was handing over responsibility for Sherlock to John.

'Morning,' John said cheerily as Sherlock rolled over, opened his eyes, stared at John, groaned, and then buried his face in the pillow.'

'Bit hungover are we?' John asked, determined to make the most of the situation.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he glared at John.

'Where am I?' he asked.

'St Mary's. You're on the short stay medical ward. Under the circumstances, I assumed your desire to keep this from Mycroft would outweigh your preference for a room in the private ward. This was the best that I can do under the circumstances.'

'When can I go home?'

'When you can stand up without falling over and when you can continue breathing off the naloxone infusion.'

In answer, Sherlock reached across and turned off the pump next to his bed.

'Oh, and you've also got to convince the mental health team that you weren't trying to kill yourself,' John realised that he was being over-compensating for an uncomfortable situation by being ridiculously cheerful, and added more soberly, 'And me for that matter. What were you trying to do Sherlock? I mean, I know that we argued, and I said some harsh things. I was being an idiot, and I'm sorry, but I never meant -'

'Relax John. Of course I wasn't trying to kill myself. I just miscalculated the dose, that was all. My tolerance must have dropped more than I'd anticipated during my time in prison.'

'That was a hell of a miscalculation then,' John told him. 'You were barely breathing. If I hadn't come back...'

'But of course you were going to come back. You always come back. How long did it take you? Forty-seven minutes?'

'Fifty-three, ' John said, making a quick calculation.

'You must be slowing up in your old age. It's that extra seven pounds that you're carrying. Mary's the only one meant to be eating for two, you know.'

'Sherlock, I'm being serious. You could have died.'

'Unlikely, I told you. I knew that you'd come back and find me.'

'I nearly just went home.'

'But you didn't.'

'No, I didn't. I went for a walk round the park, then realised I'd been a stupid arse and came back.'

'Well if you choose to put it that way, who am I to disagree with your elegant rhetoric?' Sherlock replied sarcastically.

'I'm trying to apologise here.'

'Apology accepted.'

'You haven't asked me what I'm apologising for.'

'For storming out like a teenager, I would imagine,' Sherlock said with a yawn.

'Jesus, will you listen to yourself? I'm not the one who's just ended up in A&E because I mainlined a Class A drug.'

'So you think that I should be the one apologising?' Defensive again, why did he always retreat to this?

'Yes, no, I don't know.' John sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'Sherlock, help me out here. I'm trying to be supportive. I want to help, but this thing is way out of control.'

Sherlock stared at him for a long moment and then closed his eyes, muttering something so quietly that John couldn't make out the words.

'Say that again?'

'I said, I know, John. I know that I'm out of control.'

'Well thank fuck for that,' John said. 'That's the -'

'If you dare say first step, then I will hit you, I swear.'

'So what can I do to help?'

'Well, you can stop treating me like one of your patients for a start. I've done this before, John, remember? I know how it goes.'

'How many times have you -'

'Come off heroin? It's okay, John you can say it. Many times.'

'Give me a ballpark figure,'

'Three times in rehab, more than twice that number on my own.'

'And when they locked you up and cut off your supply last week?'

'Did I withdraw? Not properly no. I told you, I was using, I wasn't addicted.'

'And the illness documented in your hospital records? The shaking, the sweats, the nausea, the abdominal pain, that was all -'

'Influenza. Correct.'

'They tried to put you on methadone didn't they? When your tox screen came back as positive for opiates and you got withdrawal symptoms. Why didn't you just take it?'

'Firstly, because I hate methadone. Secondly, because I knew that Mycroft would try to find a way to get me out of prison and onto that mission. And thirdly because even the withdrawal was better than the boredom of staring at the same four walls twenty-four hours a day with no human contact and just a tray of inedible food shoved through a hatch three time a day.'

'Bad?' John asked quietly.

'The food or the solitary confinement?'

'The solitary confinement.'

'It was just boring,' Sherlock said shortly.

'And the withdrawal?'

'Was unpleasant but served as a distraction.'

'You're talking bullshit, Sherlock and you know it.'

'Fine. I didn't want to be labelled as an addict. I told them that I'd taken oramorph after I was shot for residual chest pain from the thoracotomy, and that was why my toxicology screen was showing up as positive for opiates. Many of the other positives could be explained by my recent hospital stay in a similar way. Fortunately, they believed me.'

' _No, they didn't_ ,' John wanted to tell him. ' _It just suited them to use your explanation_.' But he realised that now wasn't the time to explain that to Sherlock.

'So you lied because you wanted to go on that mission?'

'Correct. It was a far more palatable option that the alternative option of incarceration. At least, I would be able to work. Which left me with another problem. I knew it's would be difficult enough to survive it with all of my faculties intact. I couldn't go into it with a habit of withdrawing. Either would have resulted in me being dead within weeks.'

'And yet you still used before you got on the plane.'

'One last hit. I needed something to get me through that.' John chose to avoid the uncomfortable implications of that statement.

'So why did you agree to go?'

'Because I have a James Bond complex, apparently.'

'I'm serious, Sherlock'

'How do you know that I'm not being serious? Perhaps I enjoyed tracking down Moriarty's network so much that I wanted to go back for more.'

'Did you?'

'I don't know. There was a satisfaction in immersing myself completely in something. In not having to care about anything or anybody else, it was just about the mission.'

'You sound as if you're disappointed to be back.'

'Perhaps in a way I am.'

'You don't mean that.'

'Don't I? It would have been simpler, John. It would have been a clean break.'

'It would have been suicide. You told me that'

'You know how much I enjoy beating the odds,'

'And I also know when you're talking shit.'

'Perhaps.' Sherlock looked at his watch but found himself staring at his bare wrist instead. 'How long has it been?' he asked.

'Since when?'

'Since I turned the pump off.'

'Forty-five minutes,' John said.

'Excellent,' Sherlock said, swinging his legs out of bed.

'Where are you off to?' John asked.

'Shower. I presume there's an en-suite to this place?'

'Yes. Because it's really designed for patients with infections.'

'Excellent.' Sherlock contemplated the plastic tubing attaching him to the pump for a moment before simply snapping it off and tying it in a knot.

'Oh for heavens sake,' John muttered, grabbing a pack of gauze odd the bedside locker and removing the cannula for him, securing it in place with a piece of tape.

'Find my clothes for me will you?' Sherlock said as he shut the door of the bathroom behind him.

'You can't just leave, you know,' John shouted at him through the door.

'Why not?' Sherlock asked, sticking his head back through the door, the sound of a shower already running behind him.

'Because you need to see the mental health team first for a start.'

'But I've already had a full psychiatric assessment from my own personal physician and been deemed to be appropriately repentant for my actions, and of no risk to myself or others. See to it will you, John? We've got work to do.'

John's ensuing string of expletives were fortunately lost behind the sound of the shower and the closed door.


	4. Chapter 4

On their way back to Baker Street in a taxi, John contemplated what he had achieved - and what he hadn't.

Sherlock had admitted that he had a problem with drugs. And that, whether he liked it or not, was the first step to recovery whatever system or theory you looked at.

He had also, in his usual roundabout way, admitted two very important further things; that he needed John's help, and that he would accept it. John, in turn, had made it very clear that there were conditions for him springing Sherlock from hospital without a mental health assessment. Sherlock had to agree that he as going to stop using, or rather that he was going to try to stop using, and he had to agree to let John help him.

And Sherlock, surprisingly, had acquiesced to both of John's conditions.

'No NA meetings though, and no methadone,' he had bargained.

'Buprenorphine then,'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because I don't need it, I'm not going to withdraw, and we have a case. That will keep my mind occupied for a while, at least. As long as I don't need to go into my Mind Palace, then I'll be fine until it's over.'

'And what then?'

'And then we'll see.' He had stopped and stared at John for a long moment.

'You can do this, you know,' John told him. 'You're the most stubborn bastard that I've ever met. If you set this mind to it, then there isn't going to be a problem.'

'Do you honestly believe that it's going to be that easy?'

'No, I don't think it's going to be easy at all. But I'm here for you, Sherlock. Whatever it takes, I'm going to help you to stay clean.'

'And if I can't?'

'Then I'm here for you too. I just want you to promise me one thing.'

'Go on.'

'I want you to promise me that you'll tell me when you're thinking about using and before you do. In return, I promise that I won't try to stop you. I'll support you, but if you feel that's the only option then I won't stop you.'

'I wouldn't ask you to do that.' Sherlock had been sitting, fully dressed, on the side of the hospital bed, John occupying the only chair. They were waiting for the medical registrar to come and talk to John so that John could convince her that it was safe to allow Sherlock to leave without a mental health assessment.

'I know you wouldn't, and that's why I'm making it a condition. Better make your mind up quick, or you're not going anywhere' he said as there was a knock on the door.

'Fine,' Sherlock had snapped before fixing his expression into a fixed grin to greet the medical registrar who could enable his escape.

...

Back at Baker Street, Sherlock seemed to simply deflate. He stood staring around the room, looking distinctly unsettled.

'You okay?' John asked.

'You were right, John,' Sherlock said, wandering over to the skull on the mantelpiece and picking it up, staring at it. 'In a way, I did want to escape. I was disappointed when the plane got turned round.'

'Is it that bad?'

'It's - no. It's not that bad. It's just - complicated.'

John waited for a further explanation, but none came.

'I'm going to stay here with you,' he said. I've talked to Mary and we've both agreed, it's for the best. The baby isn't due for another seven weeks. Plenty of time to get you straight first.'

'I don't need a babysitter, John,' it was a reflex response, but Sherlock didn't even sound as if he was convincing himself.

'I know. But I thought perhaps you needed a friend?'

'A friend? Perhaps you're right.'

'Will you see somebody? An addiction counsellor? It would help.'

'No. I can't talk to a stranger.'

'Will you - maybe - talk to me? Properly. Talk it through, tell me how it started, tell me why you use and how and what it feels like when you do?'

'You might not like what you hear.'

'I'm willing to take that chance.'

And Sherlock had nodded, quickly, and claiming fatigue, taken himself off to his room to sleep, leaving John to contemplate what the next few weeks were likely to hold, and wondering where he could get a crash course in addiction counselling from.

John was in over his head and he knew it, but if he'd learnt one thing from Harry, it was that what got people through was compassion, and understanding, and simply refusing to be pushed away, no matter how bad things got. He hadn't been able to be that person for Harry, but he was sure as hell going to make sure that he held on in there for Sherlock. He might not know a lot about addiction, but he knew a lot about Sherlock Holmes. He just had to hope that that was enough.

* * *

And that's it - well for now at least. Hope you enjoyed the bonus chapters.

If you would like to see more of this, then let me know. I might just be persuaded...

Extra chapters for The Plus One coming soon. And if you haven't read Explanations yet, then there are five more possible outcomes to the initial scene just waiting to be discovered!


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